Jay Peak bombshell

[ThatGuy]

Social Media how blown up Jay recently. Which is good for them since they need business but sucks for the experience there.

 

[Cat in January]

From TGR: https://www.facebook.com/reel/804583295733750/?mibextid=ZZyLBr

I was there then and it was that good. odds they were college age out and the explosion of the sport has caught the 17-26 male group and decision Making is sometimes short wired. Jay has definitely promoted early season. Hopefully it stays

 

[thetrailboss]

The other classic one there is skiing near winch operations, apparently even skiing over winch lines. Even if you are willing and legally able to put the entire liability on the skier who gets themselves badly hurt or killed, that's a seriously traumatic experience for the cat operator and anyone else who has to deal with it.

Crap like that makes me miss the old days when it was much smaller uphill crowds who understood that staying the hell out of the way was crucial.

Two or three years ago, Burke had to suspend uphill skiing due to a skier who collided with the winch cable of a cat and, fortunately, was not hurt. The cat was operating in an area that was closed to uphill and downhill skiing afterhours. IIRC the person fled the scene making it even more troubling. Despite multiple warnings and near misses, folks just continue to ignore signs and warnings. So I imagine that at Jay the line was the same--someone getting too close to a winch cable. Even being a few feet away is dangerous in the event that the line comes under tension or tension is released resulting in the steel cable bouncing around. Unfortunately, someone is going to get decapitated if this continues.

Other than that, it's pretty clear to me that Jay got sick of having to rescue folks this past weekend (or at least for one bad accident). Over the years the wide majority of folks have been respectful, responsible, followed the rules, and frankly discreet about skiing afterhours. I do recall an incident years ago at Sugarbush where someone skinned over snowmaking hoses and right in the middle of snowmaking operations. But, like other mountain recreation, we have too many people jumping into the sport with no sense of how to do it safely let alone proper etiquette. Whereas people in the past got some basic outdoor skills and knowledge from Scouts and even school (or school trips), nowadays folks just don't do these things and just assume that wearing a new Arc'Teryx jacket and having expensive gear makes up for the lack of knowledge.

 

[kbroderick]

The complaints about breaking into buildings isn't necessarily new, either--when I worked at a Vermont ski area, lift shacks generally got locked, but patrol shacks didn't. Even over the summer, we'd clear anything that we thought might get damaged or stolen out of the shacks and leave them unlocked. Apparently people would use them either way, and if they were unlocked, they did a lot less damage getting in and tended to act less pissed off once they did. It boggled my mind that people felt like it was appropriate to let themselves in and leave behind their empties.

And that was 18 years ago now.